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Skype leaves Sensitive User Data Unencrypted Locally On Computers

Skype leaves Sensitive User Data Unencrypted Locally On Computers

Apr 29, 2014
An application should always encrypt users' sensitive data, either it is local or stored on company servers, but still many popular services failed to provide fully secured solutions to their users. Cristian Dinu (DrOptix) and Dragoş Gaftoneanu , Romanian programmers at Hackyard Security Group , a private community dedicated to IT security research approaches ' The Hacker News ' editorial and claimed that the Microsoft owned most popular free voice calling service Skype leaves its local database unencrypted, that puts users' sensitive information at risk. All Skype-to-Skype voice, video, file transfers and instant messages are encrypted. Though, Skype's local database is also supposed to be encrypted because it is sensitive enough, but  Dragoş  found that Skype leaves users' full name, birthday, phone numbers, country, city and even full chat conversations unencrypted on the systems' hard drive in a known location without any encryption or password.
Viber's Poor Data Security Practices Threaten Users' Privacy

Viber's Poor Data Security Practices Threaten Users' Privacy

Apr 23, 2014
Last week we reported a critical vulnerability in the world's most popular messaging application WhatsApp, that could expose users' GPS location data to hackers  and was discovered by the researchers at UNH Cyber Forensics Research & Education Group. Same Group of researchers reported new set of vulnerabilities in another most popular messaging application ' VIber '. They claimed that Viber's poor data security practices threaten privacy of its more than 150 million active users. Cross Platform messaging app Viber allows registered users to share text messages, images, doodles, GPS Location and videos with each other, along with its popular free voice calling feature which is available for Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Blackberry and Desktops as well. The researchers found that users' data stored on the Viber Amazon Servers including images and videos are stored in an unencrypted form that could be easily accessed without any authentication i.e.which giv
Making Sense of Operational Technology Attacks: The Past, Present, and Future

Making Sense of Operational Technology Attacks: The Past, Present, and Future

Mar 21, 2024Operational Technology / SCADA Security
When you read reports about cyber-attacks affecting operational technology (OT), it's easy to get caught up in the hype and assume every single one is sophisticated. But are OT environments all over the world really besieged by a constant barrage of complex cyber-attacks? Answering that would require breaking down the different types of OT cyber-attacks and then looking back on all the historical attacks to see how those types compare.  The Types of OT Cyber-Attacks Over the past few decades, there has been a growing awareness of the need for improved cybersecurity practices in IT's lesser-known counterpart, OT. In fact, the lines of what constitutes a cyber-attack on OT have never been well defined, and if anything, they have further blurred over time. Therefore, we'd like to begin this post with a discussion around the ways in which cyber-attacks can either target or just simply impact OT, and why it might be important for us to make the distinction going forward. Figure 1 The Pu
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